Luke Combs might just be country music’s most reliable hitmaker — an artist who can take a cliché you have heard a thousand times and sell it like it is entirely his own. ‘The Way I Am’, his sixth studio album, is the most complete showcase yet of this skill, but at 22 tracks and 73 minutes long, that uncanny ability is also its most glaring limitation.
Wish Upon A Whiskey is cinematic and genuinely brilliant, its tongue-twisting chorus wriggling into your eardrums and refusing to leave. Rethink Some Things smuggles a disco-funk groove beneath its country surface. Co-written with The Brothers Hunt, it crackles with an energy the album’s first half rarely matches.
Sleepless In A Hotel Room is also relentlessly catchy, its empowering electric riffs pushing you back for one more chorus. And the album’s strongest run — Ever Mine with Alison Krauss, Can’t Tell Me I’m Wrong, Miss You Here, and Tell ‘Em About Tonight — is as good as anything Combs has recorded.
Almost without exception, though, these peaks arrive in the album’s second half and it can be a slog to get there. The opening stanza leans heavily on formula: Days Like These resurrects well-worn back-porch acoustics, Back In The Saddle’s comeback framing rings hollow from an artist six albums deep in nine years, and too many tracks blur into each other.
Be By You feels like a placeholder and, with more than 20 songs knocking around, your patience will be tested by every bit of padding. The title track captures Combs’ central conflict best: "I’m a walkin’ contradiction / but a well-intentioned man.” He’s not doing anything new, and yet, here you are, enjoying yourself. With a three-night run at Wembley Stadium this summer, Combs has summited country music’s commercial mountain. ‘The Way I Am’ needed an edit it never got, but his songbook just got a dozen new singalongs.
Luke Combs Upcoming Tour Dates are as follows:
Sat July 18 2026 - SLANE Castle
Sun July 19 2026 - SLANE Castle
Fri July 24 2026 - EDINBURGH Scottish Gas Murrayfield
Sat July 25 2026 - EDINBURGH Scottish Gas Murrayfield
Fri July 31 2026 - LONDON Wembley Stadium
Sat August 01 2026 - LONDON Wembley Stadium
Sun August 02 2026 - LONDON Wembley Stadium
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